


Retrospect

by themillenialfalcon (abunchofmellarky)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Baby Ben Solo, Baby Rey, Eventual Reylo, F/M, Second Chances, Time Travel, force ghost obiwan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 23:22:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13669416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abunchofmellarky/pseuds/themillenialfalcon
Summary: In retrospect, there were a lot of things that Han Solo would change about his life if given the chance. For instance…. Maybe he shouldn’t have dumped that cargo he was carrying for Jabba. Or maybe he shouldn’t have gotten so drunk that night on Corellia that he tripped and sliced his chin open on that rock. Maybe he shouldn’t have eaten that shellfish on his honeymoon. And, maybe, he should have retired from smuggling when he was young and never turned back.Maybe he never should have sent his son away. Or left his wife.And yet, for reasons beyond his comprehension, The Force had decided to grant him a second chance at life. But, as was just his luck, it looked like he was going to start out said second chance with his wife pissed at him and his kid scared of him.Naturally, he had a bad feeling about this.





	Retrospect

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, guys. I guess im starting a new new fic now! It will be reylo eventually, but probably not until the last couple chapters. The main focus will be Han/Leia and the Solo family dynamic.
> 
> Please review if you like it! Feedback is essential to my motivation! 
> 
> You can also follow me on tumblr at @themillenialfalcon

He was falling – falling and falling for what felt like an eternity. Longer than he ever would have expected. But, then, he didn’t know what to expect, really. It was the ultimate mystery of life after all – what it feels like to die.

The ache in his gut was barely even perceptible at this point. It had been far surpassed by the ache in his heart. And the cacophony of images flashing through his mind was a distraction from the physical pain of his condition – though not a wholly welcome one.

He’d heard, of course, that when you die your life flashes before your eyes. Now that he was dying, he realized that this was true. In a way. Unfortunately, as was often the case with his shit storm of a life, this wasn’t really a pleasant experience. The only flashes he was focusing on were all of his regrets.

He had many. His life hadn’t exactly been a pinnacle of moral superiority. He’d done some good deeds, sure. But his youth had been mostly a clusterfuck of criminal activity, selfish opportunism, and questionable choices – many of which left countless people ruined or just plain dead in his wake.

He’d killed a lot of people. Of course a lot of that was due to the war… but not all. He’d stolen from more. And he rationalized that by claiming that he had to eat somehow. After all, there weren’t a lot of reputable choices for a Corellian street rat. He did what he had to do to survive… at least that is what he told himself for a very long time.

He wouldn’t necessarily tell that to Kanjiklub… His plan to screw them over was to cover the down payment on that freighter. Which…sure, he could afford at this point in his life but… he didn’t want to cover the cost himself. What savvy businessman would? He was going to get their money back. And the Guavian Death Gang’s….eventually.

Perhaps in his old age a lot of his questionable choices were simply about making profit… But in his youth. In his youth he did it all to survive.

Although… Jabba might disagree. His habit of skimming off the top of some of Jabba’s shipments was one of the reasons why the gangster had such an… interest in him. And by the looks of it, he’d be joining him in hell very soon. So, maybe he’d ask.

Yes. That is what he needed to ease his conscious regarding the folly of his youth – tacit approval and understanding from the giant slug monster that tried to enslave his wife and kill him and his friends. That would make him feel better.

_His wife._

In truth, the regrets garnered during the folly of his youth were nothing more than fleeting feelings barely worth remembering. At this point, as he fell and fell and fell and kept falling, he could really only focus on two.

_Leia._

The feeling of her hair under his chin, thick and grey with age, was the last thing he remembered of her. And the smell of it. The same shampoo she’d used for as long as he could remember. The smell filled his nostrils as real as though she was standing in front of him right now, close enough that maybe if he reached out she might be able to stop him from falling.

Why did he ever leave Leia?

She would feel it. He knew. She would feel it just like the old man could feel it. This would be his last regret. His final gift to her would be the pain of his death. And she would feel it before anyone else knew. He wondered if she could feel it now. Closing his eyes around his tears, he considered that maybe if she could feel it now she could also feel how sorry he was for ever agreeing to walk away. The day he left her behind, he’d left the only happy days of his life behind with her.

_Some of it was…. good._

She’d agreed with him at least. That was one regret he could now file away. He’d at least told her - in his limited way- that those days had been the happiest of his life. He didn’t need to worry about whether or not she was able to decode that message. She was. That was one of the reasons he’d loved her in the first place.

Those early years - after the war - the years with him and Leia and… and Ben, those had been his happiest. The years when he would wake up with his wife in his arms and his son would look up at him with awe and wonder… like he was some kind of hero or something. Kids all over the galaxy called him a hero, but that was all bantha fodder to him. He only cared about one kid. His kid.

_Ben._

His biggest regret. Not Ben, of course. Never Ben. No… he didn’t regret Ben for a second. Even as he was falling now, his gut torn open from his own son’s blade, he was still confident that Ben was the greatest thing he’d ever done in his life.

The day that Ben had been born was the scariest and most wonderful day of his life. It was almost thirty years ago and he still remembered every second of that day down to the strangest details, like the way the light in the ceiling to the right of Leia’s hospital bed kept blinking or the name of the nursing droid, or smell of the flowers that were sitting by Leia’s beside.

Han’s biggest regret was never bringing Ben into the galaxy. His biggest regret was utterly failing to be the father than his son needed him to be. His biggest regret was the endless string of disappointments Ben had suffered as a child by his hand. It was ever agreeing to send Ben away to Luke to begin with. His biggest regret was ever making Ben feel like his legacy was more important than his soul. His biggest regret was ever making his son feel like Snoke cared more about him than his own father.

Images of the son he’d lost were all he could see now. His dark brown eyes that were so much like his mother’s. The first time his tiny fist had grabbed his finger. The first time he’d smiled. The first time he’d laughed. The day he’d taught him how to shoot a blaster. The day he’d taught him how to fly The Falcon. The first time he’d called him Dad.

_Dad._

Suddenly, and for the first time since the blade had pierced his flesh, the ache in Han’s gut returned. It throbbed as if with every beat of his heart the blade was plunged into him anew, landing heavily with great force with each thrum. He closed his eyes tightly in a reflexive effort to somehow protect himself from the assault.

Dad.

He could hear Ben’s voice. His Ben’s voice. The voice of the little boy that he’d carried on his shoulders and tucked into bed at night. The wound throbbed again –the force making him grimace from the pain.

DAD.

The voice wasn’t going away. And neither were the sharp bursts of pain under his rib cage. They drove into him with stronger and stronger vigor as the voice grew louder and closer. It seemed so close now that it was almost as if his young son were sitting in front of him.

And he was falling faster now.

“Dad!”

His heart rate was picking up. He could feel the ground getting closer to him with each passing moment. It would be only a few seconds before his back would collide with the hard surface, taking the wind – and the life – right out of him.

Strangely, the sound around him starting fading away. It was replaced by a deafening silence so peaceful and quiet it almost made his ears ring. Light flooded his eyes as well. The brightness around him was so apparent that it seemed as though if he opened his eyes he would wake up to a band of sunlight streaming into a bright white room. The darkness of Starkiller had disappeared, and he could no longer sense the chaos of the battle around him.

“DAD!”

Ben’s voice was the only sound that remained. It was getting closer still and the pain ramming into his gut with every exclamation was only feeling all the more real and fresh. It was like a physical fist punching into his fresh wound.

“DAAAAD!!!!”

With that final yell, his back crashed against the ground. His whole body jerked like a fish hitting land. His lips parted from the shock and he took in a painful gasp of air. His eyes snapped open – the light that had surrounded him moments before was now almost blinding. His heart was pounding and his head was throbbing from pain.

But he still wasn’t dead.

Desperately reacting out for something – anything – to tether him back to reality and make him understand what was happening, he grabbed hold of the closet object he could feel. It was soft, warm, and small. He gripped it with both hands and squeezed as his eyes tried to acclimate themselves to observe what was going on around him.

Had he really managed to survive the blade of his son’s lightsaber and a stories long fall? Or was this some kind of afterlife?

“Dad?”

And, suddenly, in one painful and overwhelming moment, everything around him snapped into perfect focus.

“Ben!”

 

* * *

 

 

The boy straddling his stomach was looking at him with eyes wide in fear. Han’s hands were gripping the child’s upper arms so tightly that he couldn’t move. Instead, the young boy was planted firmly on top of him – frozen with surprise. The heels of his small hands were digging into the flesh of Han’s stomach –in the precise spot where his adult son had plunged his blade into him only moments before.

He could feel everything around him start to solidify. The bright light was bursting in from the window behind him. The surface his back had collided with was soft and plush. His head was cradled by a feathered pillow.

He was in bed.

More specifically, he was in the bed that was housed in his apartment on Chandrila – the apartment he had not stepped foot in since the day he and Leia had decided to go their separate ways. The falling had been a dream.

But it couldn’t have been.

Han had been plagued by falling dreams many times in his long life. He was no stranger to waking up in his bed with a start after dreaming that his back had hit the ground. He’d lived through this routine hundreds of times. But this wasn’t just another dream.

He’d lived every second of it. Decades.

Reality was not settling in the way that it usually did after a particularly fretful nightmare. No… as each moment passed in his marital bed, he became more and more confused as to how he got here. He remembered more about the dream than he remembered about his present -if this even was his present and not some wild hallucination.

The last vivid memory he had was the look on his adult son’s face as he’d reach a hand up and caressed his cheek before beginning his fall. He remembered the way the red light had shone on his hair. He remembered how his eyes were laced with tears. He remembered the feel of Ben’s skin under his hand. He remembered how the soft baby skin that he’d been used to feeling had become rough with stubble and age – the age of a near thirty year old man. His son was no longer a child. What he was seeing now simply could not be real.

“…..Dad?” the voice was meek now. And since the child was stuck in his grasp, it was no longer accompanied by hands drilling into his stomach. Instantly, he loosened his death grip on the child and said a silent plea that he hadn’t squeezed him so hard it would bruise.

Ben bolted off of him as quickly as possible. He hopped off the bed and his small bare feet landed on the floor with barely a thud. As soon as he was down he raced through the door and out of the room.

“Benny!” Han tried to yell after him. He sat up in the bed, but the piercing pain in his head was so profound that he had to lie back down almost instantly. He was overcome with dizziness, and even as the shock in his system was somewhat subsiding, his heart was still pounding with relentless enthusiasm.

His mouth was dry. His ears were still ringing. And he was thirsty. Oh so thirsty.

“Ben Solo! What have I told you about running in this house!?”

Leia.

Force alive what was happening to him? He could hear Leia’s voice echoing through the halls – softer and clearer than it had been in years, but still as powerful as ever. She was angry. Not that Leia being angry was anything out of the ordinary, but it was still the last thing he had expected to hear upon his death.

Not even a moment later, she appeared in the doorway. Every single trace of age that had been on her face the last time he’d seen her had completely melted away. She stood before him now looking younger than he’d ever remembered seeing her. She had nary a wrinkle on her face. Her hair was silky and brown with not a trace of silver anywhere. She was so thin – impossibly thin. Surely, she’d never been that young. It wasn’t possible. Neither one of them had ever been that young. She didn’t look a day passed thirty. She looked younger than… Ben…

“Oh!” she exclaimed with a false enthusiasm that made his head ring from the sound and his hair stand from nerves. “I guess you finally decided to wake up.”

She entered the room like a storm, slamming a glass of water down on the table next to him along with two white pills before starting to rummage through the jewelry box on her dresser.

“Water…” he mumbled. He grabbed the glass and poured it down his throat. Moving his body upright was still a painful experience, but it was a sacrifice he was willing to make in return for hydration. He didn’t remember being this thirsty when he’d been on Starkiller. Why was he so thirsty? Why wasn’t his heart slowing down?

“You can get more yourself,” Leia snapped as he chugged the beverage. “I’m leaving in five minutes. I’m running late as it is.”

“My heart…” he muttered. “I think I’m having a heart attack.”

Leia rolled her eyes. “Stop being dramatic. You’re dehydrated – not dying.”

“Where am I? How did I get here?” he asked. Leia turned around and shot him a look that would freeze a rancor in its tracks.

“You’re in our bedroom. And you got here when Lando decided to unceremoniously drop you at the front door of our apartment at 0300 last night and I had to carry your nerfherding ass to bed because you were so drunk you couldn’t manage to put one foot in front of the other.”

“Drunk…” he said.

“Yes. Drunk,” Leia repeated. “Don’t worry. I’ve already asked Threepio to watch Ben for you. So don’t let your responsibilities as a husband or father get in the way of your hangover.”

Ben and Threepio…Hangover… Wait…He remembered this day. He remembered this morning. Vividly. He remembered the night that Lando had shown up in Chandrila by complete surprise. They’d gone out to a Casino and he’d had way too much to drink and lost way too much money. He remembered how royally pissed Leia had been at him for days. He remembered how Leia and Amilyn Holdo had been planning a meet up for lunch for months during her short stay on planet, and he’d completely ruined it. Ruined it because all he wanted to do was lie in bed and Ben…

_Ben._

He’d promised Ben they’d spend the day together while Leia was gone. And when Leia told him that Threepio was going to watch him instead because Daddy wasn’t feeling good he’d become so inconsolable. Objects started flying around the room and glass started to shatter. Leia, both heartbroken and terrified by their son’s behavior, couldn’t bring herself to leave. It was over a year before she’d have the chance to spend a day with Amilyn Holdo again.

Ben had been sullen for days. And, this time, he was old enough that he was starting to remember all of the broken little promises that Han had made to him in his early childhood. He was just old enough that he was starting to rationalize things. He was starting to notice patterns.

After that morning, every promise Han made to Ben would get follow up questions. Are you sure? Do you promise? Do you double promise? Even when Han would follow through with things, Ben seemed almost surprised. He hated it.

“No!” Han yelled, surprising Leia and even himself in that moment.

“What?” Leia asked.

“No! Don’t… Just… Tell Threepio I’ll still take Ben for the day. I promised we’d go to the sim park. He’s looking forward to it.” He was looking forward to it so much that he’d apparently spent a good amount of time that morning trying to wake his father up by force. And Han would have the bruise on his stomach to prove it. Leia raised an eyebrow and placed her hands on her hips.

“You’re going to go to a loud sim park full of screaming wannabe pilot children with bright lights flashing everywhere and bells and buzzers going off at every turn with one of the worst hangovers of your life?”

Han felt his soul die even if he body for some reason hadn’t... He could picture it now – the boisterous center filled with excited kids and miniature flight simulators everywhere. It was going to be loud. And exhausting. And expensive. And he didn’t remember exactly how much money he’d already pissed away the night before – but he knew it was enough to add to the list of reasons why Leia didn’t have sex with him for a good couple of weeks after that night.

“Yeah…” he said. He watched as an amused smirk spread slowly across his wife’s face. She nodded and walked closer to him.

“Okay, then, flyboy.” She picked up the two small pills she’d set down on the nightstand and placed them in his hand. Han looked at them for a moment before swallowing them – dry. He’d already finished the entire glass of water. Leia reached up and put a hand on his grimacing face, and for a brief second he thought that maybe she wasn’t mad at him anymore and was giving him a bit of comfort.

“Have fun,” she said, sharply emphasizing her tone with two sharp pats on his cheek. She turned around and made her way toward the door, but not before almost slamming into a small pajama clad black haired blur who had decided to appear in their bedroom once again.

“No running in the house!” she chided. She placed her hands on Ben’s shoulders and bent her knees to be at his level. “Do you hear me?”

“Yes…” Ben murmured as he looked down at his feet. Leia ran a hand through Ben’s messy hair and put a finger under his chin, lifting his face up to look her in the eye.

“Daddy’s still going to take you to the sim park today. But he doesn’t feel very well. So I want you to be on your best behavior.”

Han scoffed. Ben’s best behavior – even as a child – was what most parents would consider a nightmare. He was hyper, emotional, and prone to trouble. His behavior was one of the main reasons they’d started to consider sending him off to Luke’s damn Jedi School. They thought it would calm him down.

They were wrong.

“I’m going out to lunch with Auntie Amilyn and I’ll be back later, okay? You have fun.”

With that, Leia placed a kiss on their son’s forehead, stood up, and walked down the hall and out the front door. Father and son were left alone together in the bedroom. Ben was standing there silently, watching him with wide eyes – the same surprised and startled eyes that had peered down at him after Han had grabbed him in a panic upon awakening.

“Hey, kiddo…” Han said. “Why don’t you uh…go get dress-”

He didn’t finish. Ben quickly bolted out of the room without a word, leaving Han lying in bed confused, exhausted, and in pain.

It seemed that the Force had, for reasons beyond his comprehension, granted him a second chance at life. And, as was just his luck, it looked like he was going to start out said second chance with his wife pissed at him and his kid scared of him.

Naturally, he had a bad feeling about this.

 


End file.
